Former prison guard Ton Mink (77) looks with horror at war criminal Ferdinand aus der Fünten in the impressive TV series The Jewish Council. “What a disgusting man.” Is this the same man with whom he had a special bond for eighteen years in the Breda Koepel prison? “If I had seen this at the time, I would certainly have kept more distance.”
As a young prison guard of 25 years old, Ton Mink from Dongen first entered the Breda detention center in 1971. He soon came into contact with ‘the three from Breda’, three war criminals who were serving a life sentence there. Over the years, a special contact developed with one of them, Ferdinand aus der Fünten. “After a while we addressed each other as you and you. I called him Ferdi and he addressed me as Herr Mink.”
Sadistic
During the Second World War, Aus der Fünten led the deportation of more than 100,000 Jewish Dutch people to the extermination camps. Due to his sadistic actions, he was eventually sentenced to death.
Although he regularly confided to his jailer that he would have preferred the bullet, he was saved from the firing squad by Queen Juliana who refused to sign the verdict. The former SS officer then spent more than 36 years of his life in a Breda cell. He died in Germany in 1989, three months after being released.
Shine
In the reality-based TV series, German actor Jacob Diehl plays the role of the Hauptsturmführer in an unparalleled way. As Aus der Fünten, he maintains the appearance that the chairmen David Cohen and Abraham Asscher of the Jewish Council can negotiate with him.
In reality, he is completely uninterested in the fate that awaits the Jews. For the SS officer, the Jewish Council is an efficient means of registering and deporting as many Dutch Jews as possible.
Curious
“I recognize that fierce look in his eyes and that compelling attitude,” says Ton while watching a fragment of the EO series. “In prison we saw another man who followed the rules. Of course we knew he wasn’t in custody for the theft of a pack of butter. But when you deal with him every day, you don’t think about that all the time. That’s not possible because then you wouldn’t be able to do your job. Yet somehow I always found him schizophrenic.”
Ton thinks about the times he went to Tilburg to buy special pipe tobacco for ‘Ferdi’, helped him put on his support stockings later in life and about the walks he took with him through the city for check-ups at the Ignatius Hospital.
“We were certainly not friends but I had found a workable relationship with him. Bizarre actually, but at that time much less was published about the war than now. I was curious about the man, especially in the beginning.”
‘Extremely drunk’
The former prison guard can remember one conversation in which he confronted Aus der Fünten with his war past. The reason was a photo of the inhumane evacuation of the Jewish psychiatric institution Het Apeldoornsche Bosch in 1943. The image showed the Nazi officer kicking a patient onto the train to Auschwitz. Ton Mink confronted Aus der Fünten with the photo he had discovered in a book in the library.
“How can you do something like that? Doesn’t your conscience bother you?” Ton asked him. “I was drunk,” the former SS man replied in German. “I realized that he had to gain courage for his actions in advance. In doing so, he indicated that he knew he was wrong, while he has never officially expressed remorse. I never understood that. In that respect, this series is another revelation for me.”
The second episode of The Jewish Council can be seen on Sunday, March 17 at 9:20 PM on NPO 1. The series can also be seen on NPO Start and NL Ziet
2024-03-17 17:12:16
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